Ryke

Edit: I popped in an edited version of this piece that I made for sale at Eurofurence in print form! People liked it :3

Ryke originally approached me for a tattoo design, and something similar to an older piece of mine titled “Fuck These Fears,” in which Theo stands with his legs wide apart to perform some emotional intensity along with a written motto. Looking back on that idea and seeing how far away from it I steered the ship, I do feel like I owe him one (and the beginning of that you can see in the attached sketch on paper.) But the journey of how I arrived at the more subdued conclusion to a bold start is worth sharing.

Managed authenticity is a difficult question. How we appear to others ideally shouldn’t affect us, but then why does it? Ryke spoke about coolness in this context, that he both believed in his own and that he also wanted others to perceive him that way. There had been an apprehension against vulnerability.

What had drawn Ryke to Fuck These Fears was the confidence it projected. On the one hand I would have supported him in acting more confidently himself around others by recreating the idea with his character, on the other I was drawn toward the idea of prioritizing the relationship to one’s drives before any behaviour is formed. Said simply; why do we even want to look confident?

My goal with Fuck These Fears had been to force myself to confront things I lacked confidence in, such as my obsession over whether my business might fail. Maybe it worked. I no longer postpone stressful topics, remain in touch with the unknown, taking on responsibility, etc etc. Nonetheless, I don’t know if it has given me any confidence, as I am sure I make mistakes every day. Also, I don’t know about the utility of putting it into a picture that simply addresses all the fears equally and very impractically when some are more relevant than others. So as Ryke approached me about confidence, I had this urge to pull it back somehow, maybe because of how Ryke spoke of his character as a bit ostentatious. But the feelings I had about having made the artwork also mattered. Think of the artstyle of it. If it’s explosive and appealing, isn’t it trying to show me in a light that doesn’t represent me in a humble or temperate but rather an unnecessarily pointy way? It screams: ‘look at the qualities I wish I had,’ and it does so in such a polemicizing and dramatic way.

The inner will to be did not come because I tried to push outward. It came because I learned to reframe my goals as the enjoyment of a certain ongoing struggle that may never conclude perfectly, quite contained and content, and I ended up moving toward this vibe in this present piece as well.

The Tarot cards drawn were the Six of Wands (“Victory”), The Lovers, and the Five of Wands (“Defeat”). While the Six has a vibe of warmth,  devotion and surrender for greater gain, the Five struggles. Since the Swords deal with communication and thought, they are here decided against us in some destructive way. The upside-down pentagram shows how the sovereignity of spirit is buried under the substances of our psyche (the elements.) This could mean that our reputation is outside our control no matter what, advise us to give up control over it because we will never be able to fight for it. We may experience both victory and defeat, but if we aim at truthfulness (more reasonably - the absence of falsities in our spoken words) first, the possible quirks of a spontaneous social interaction have no bearing on our self-image. This goes back to the idea of the mask and how it relates to the essential. („the mask loves that which is deep.“) Those deep truths, which are like an equilibrium beyond, are above representation, but very much worth pursuing with our mask/persona, because in the mirror, we don’t get to keep the mask on if we intend to be self-responsible.

I say it like this because The Lovers have to do with the greater lesson to be learnt from all forms of relation. Their axial symmetry in Qabalistic Tarot means that our minds work in dualities (even neurologically) which they attempt to reconcile to such an extent that they can split us apart, which is why there are swords in the background of the Thoth card. It hurts. These dualities may emerge in relationships to others, where something in us is always activated by the other person (and it is nearly impossible to realize why.) As Socrates explains in Symposion, this is because as we are pregnant, we seek to give birth in Beauty (the aim of Love), while we would suffer the burden if Beauty was absent. If we indefinitely reach toward truth and beauty which are eternally above what we experience in time, we see clearly that to identify with any one shadow of them would be illusion. All loserdom and heroism are brothers-in-arms against us, the archetype of the Other is defined by being parallel to us (Gemini is two parallel lines), and is undeserving of instinctual hierarchical projections. When we talk to another person, we talk to our inner representation of them, and this representation is based on us.

Ryke having agreed to the reading insofar as that he’d already arrived at many of the ideas independently, the search for a motto began. He came up with “This is all we have,” and I am hecking sad for ultimately excluding it from the picture. Other artists are much more confident than me at fitting letters in. One of my early attempted sketches showed his character soaring upward in the composition, head stretched vertically along the lettering of the motto. Unfortunately, the more I worked the more horizontal he leaned, which had to do with the very idea of the ongoing struggle, which he had at one point called a positive kind of burden - I was eager to have that, and the typography somewhow no longer worked. If I’m permitted this escape I’d blame it on a lack of time, though that also implies a lack of efficiency. The silver lining  is that thanks to this experience, I can aim at greater efficiency down the line. I want lettering in my art, I do! WEHHH

The expression of the character is neutral in accordance with the ‘new normal’ of temperance in introversion and extroversion. Instead of bright sunlight and pure happiness, I chose something more subtle. It's still a good experience, but it's not what I would describe as “perfect," because it can never be, and that‘s ok.

Ryke having both wings and a finned tail, the elemental affinities became the inspiration for the whole scenario. Flying just over the water means mastery over it. Briefly, water is that which changes shape, it contains creativity, desires and more, the colours the mind takes on, has depth, reflects, distorts, and hides much below its surface. In that sense, the artwork is an adaptation of the Prince of Cups (who is sometimes said to be pretty erotic, subtle, creative and romantic), though here shown with a bit more of a strain - after all it really isn't an easy thing to beat those little raptor-wings over one's reflections. Elementally, the Prince of Cups happens to be air and water as well.

The afterimages have a long history. at first I began with the upright pose of the original sketch (which I started rendering only to discard it later) but then superimposed increasingly horizontal poses. Admittedly, I mostly liked it because it seemed cool, but that’s a gimmick, so here I go and try to justify. In part they seemed like continuity across individual instances (read; social interactions.) I also kept them because I would have regretted losing the work totally, so if they’re not as perfect as could be, that’s on me.

The foot at the bottom has so much contrast because it reminded me of the eagle of the Prince of Cups. I think it's to do with catching fish (fish are very symbolic) or reaching, which seems fair enough. I‘d say that‘s about it with the artsy choices here, so, voila! A sketch I carried around for quite a while in parallel with another artwork for Swifaut, likely because of the slight similarities in subject, including the frequent mention of the Lovers.

Y’all stay in love,
Theo